![]() ![]() It helped me sort out the most promising ideas. It gave me a sense of how much was a lot and how much was a little, and how expensive something might be. That sounds like a lot, but is it? But what percentage of the total does it represent? The article didn’t say, and that kind of omission was surprisingly common.Įventually, I built a mental framework for the things I was learning. One article said that an emissions-trading program in Europe had reduced the carbon footprint of the aviation sector there by 17 million tons per year. Another problem was that the data I was seeing often appeared devoid of context. For one thing, the numbers were so large. When I started learning about climate change, I kept encountering facts that were hard to get my head around. To stop the warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change - and these effects will be very bad - humans need to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. But since we don’t know the exact figure for 2020, I will keep using 51 billion tons as the total.) Global emissions dropped a bit in 2020, because the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the economy so dramatically. (Note: 51 billion tons is based on the latest available data. Although the figure may go up or down a bit from year to year, it’s generally increasing and this is where we are today. The other is zero.įifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year. There are two numbers you need to know about climate change. DENNIS SCHROEDER / NREL (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) ![]()
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